Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Opera (1987)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

I start this review with something of a confession: it has only dawned on me in the past few years, really, that my liking for Dario Argento’s work is based on a very small number of his films. And it’s awful – as well as terribly unpopular these days, given the vicissitudes of the likes of ‘film Twitter’ and so on – to have to start a piece of writing on a negative note, but I still can’t help but wonder whether a lot of Argento’s cult following stems from blind luck and happy accidents, rather than a cogent approach and intention on his part from the beginning of his career. Yes, he has a strong aesthetic style, often distilled into a number of notorious key scenes per film, but given time and money, he has never really scaled to the heights of Suspiria (1977) in his subsequent work. This brings me, then, to Opera (1987), made a full decade after Suspiria, and a film that, whilst showcasing some of that Argento magic, flounders in a number of ways which ultimately break the spell.

True to the title, we start in rehearsals for an opera performance – with the leading lady, Mara, none too happy with the ways things are being done, much to the exasperation of the crew and musicians. Eventually, annoyed beyond the point of self-control, Mara flees the venue – straight into the path of a car, incurring injuries which take her out of the performance altogether. In true cinematic style, it’s opening night, but any panic is assuaged by the fact that there’s an understudy, all ready to go. Betty (Cristina Marsillach) goes through the rigmarole of saying she doesn’t want to, but before too long she’s getting into her (bloody weird) costume and preparing to take to the stage.

Things are, of course, going on behind the scenes: someone is stalking the stalls, and once you see the ubiquitous black leather gloves on whoever-it-is, you know that the person in question can’t have good things in mind. Betty successfully gets through a storming debut, but it seems that she already has a stalker fan who is methodically dispatching anyone who seems close to her. Their issues seem bound up with sexual attraction/jealousy, and they have a predilection for making Betty watch whatever they’re doing. This gives us this film’s own key infamous visual, as the killer takes to sellotaping pins beneath Betty’s eyes to stop her blinking and missing any of the brutality. Opera is of course, akin to its giallo cousins, essentially a grisly whodunnit where the audience is encouraged throughout to guess at the guilty, replete with (if you know of some of Argento’s other work) a certain sense that it’ll be someone improbable. Is this correct, in this case? Well, it wouldn’t be for me to say…

There were a few of these ‘performances of performances’ horror films during this era; everything from Waxwork to Demons could qualify. However, Opera’s closest comparison piece is almost certainly StageFright, directed by Argento’s associate and countryman Michele Soavi and released earlier the same year. The links are clear: Stagefright also boasts a mysterious killer stalking around an arts venue, seemingly fascinated by elements of the performance itself whilst picking off the performers and crew in a series of ways which happened to give good set pieces. Opera broadens its remit rather more widely than StageFright in the end, moving the action beyond the opera house and following Betty wherever she goes (which turns out to be quite a long way indeed) but I have to say that I think StageFright has the edge on Argento’s offering. For me, it’s more tightly plotted and coherent, lacking some of the frankly oddball decisions which are perhaps intended to lighten the mood in Opera, but dilute the appeal instead. For instance, why the former leading lady Mara appears in the film as nothing more than a shrill voice and a pair of legs is beyond me; it put me in mind of the ‘mammy’ character from Tom and Jerry, which isn’t a comparison I expected to make here. Then, even given my usual delight in viewing an 80s (or indeed any era) time capsule, the costumes are distractingly weird, the script is wincingly stilted and there are even some weak, clownish moments, which rest uncomfortably with the eventual grisly content. Opera simply underlines for me that Argento depends on atmosphere, with a good eye for key shots which underpin this atmosphere: plot/dialogue so often falls flat.

I can’t deny that the use of macro shots and some ingenious framing have some charm in the film, and actually, so much of this falls to actress Cristina Marsillach, who is put through a great deal of these shots and a great deal of other things too. Had she been less engaged in her role, then I doubt very much anyone beyond serious completists would really be talking about Opera today. Hopelessly, plausibly naive, but also putting in a lot of quite physical graft, Marsillach admittedly does a good turn here. She’s had absolutely nothing to do with the horror genre since Opera, mind; this is a shame, and ours not to reason why, but she seems to be known for this role and this role only outside of her home country, perhaps proving that success in the genre is a mixed blessing at best.

Still, regardless of the fact that Opera has a few interesting moments and a good lead actress, I doubt very much whether this could ever be a film to win Argento any new fans. Existing aficionados of his work will, I am sure, appreciate this clean, tidy print from CultFilms, which also boasts directorial involvement with its 2K restoration and a number of extras, including a brand new interview with Argento and a behind-the-scenes film showing the film being made. For the rest of us, we may like the more stylish and innovative moments here, but perhaps not be altogether engaged by this nearly two-hour movie.

Opera (1987) will be released on Blu-ray on the 21st January 2019 by CultFilms. It is now available to pre-order.

 

Josie (2018)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It must be incredibly hard to carve a new niche for yourself as an actor when you’re largely known for one role, but – as Game of Thrones is about to enter its final ever season – this is something the cast are going to have to negotiate; that is, unless they’re doing it already. Josie, starring Sophie ‘Sansa Stark’ Turner, is at least a fair attempt by this actress to do something rather different, and – on paper at least – it’s an interesting premise, promising ‘rural noir’ and dangerous obsessions spilling over into action. We know that bad things are definitely going to happen, as the opening scenes show us police kicking their way into a room; the only question, then, is how we get to this point. Unfortunately, the journey which takes us there isn’t able to sustain the initial promise.

Loner Hank (Dylan McDermott) lives a quiet life, albeit for his well-meaning neighbours intruding on his space from time to time. He goes fishing, he takes his boat out, and he keeps tortoises? When a teenage girl, Josie (Turner) moves in, however, something about this young woman, living independently at such a young age, is a clear spur to action, as Hank grows increasingly protective of her. Josie, meanwhile, busies herself with settling into her new school, making friends with a boy called Marcus. Marcus and Hank already know each other, and the arrival of Josie into their lives inflames the tension between them further. Still, Hank and Josie develop a friendship of sorts, one shot through with jealousy, but in some ways it’s good for Hank: he gets out and about a bit more, and starts to interact more. A push/pull ensues, with Josie seemingly not quite at home amongst adults nor amongst people her own age. And as things progress, it transpires that Hank has his demons, although not the demons imagined for him by the locals, including young Marcus.

Calling Josie ‘noir’ is an odd decision by those marketing this film, as it sets up the immediate issue that this isn’t really noir at all, nor does it seem to have any elements I’d associate with the genre. In fact, it plays a few of its scenes for laughs, which sits a little uncomfortably with the other, more brooding content. Tonally, it feels a little off, and doesn’t add a great deal to the film other than making it feel a little uneven. The characterisation could be more pronounced, too, even if the lack of this is justified by the film’s ending. There are lulls, and I feel as if the film is holding onto its surprise twist in ways which make the rest of the film feel a little like treading water. This is a shame, as McDermott’s Hank has promise, as a character which could have stood a lot more scrutiny.

As for Sophie Turner, she does a reasonable job with the script and the direction she’s given, but she doesn’t quite cut it as a Lolita character which, frequently, the film seems to be implying she is – but any sexuality is shied away from, or takes place off-screen, leaving the allure which is integral to her motivations and her interactions with the men in her life a little lacklustre. The film waves through her rather unconvincing Southern accent by having her say she’s lived all over the country, but this is another factor which holds the audience at bay; she just isn’t quite in the role, to me, and I really don’t think that this is the role to silence Sansa for good.

One of the issues with writing this review up is that I realise I’ve actually got rather less to say about the film than I’d usually find to say. This is absolutely because it’s a very run-of-the-mill, unremarkable film I’m afraid, something to wash over you, neither actively bad enough to draw comment, nor good enough to have lots of strong points to discuss. It all unfolds in a neat (and much appreciated) ninety minutes, at least, but Josie as a whole film is more awkward than brooding, unsure whether to encourage us to laugh at its characters or feel sympathy, and holding onto its big reveal at the expense of doing very much else. It’s all too easy to poke holes in that ending, too, after everything. Overall, this was a slow and frustrating watch, and all of the actors involved could do far, far better.

Josie is released on VOD, DVD and EST on 14th Janurary 2019. 

 

Deadbeat at Dawn (1988)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

I’ve really only encountered director Jim Van Bebber thus far through his art-house spin on The Manson Family (1997), a film which I confess didn’t quite gel with me – but I’ve never, until now, seen his first feature Deadbeat at Dawn, made around a decade earlier but filmed over four years altogether. Deadbeat at Dawn is certainly more linear than The Manson Family, but it’s still a surprisingly multi-layered spin on your standard gang movie, with some hints of the art-house approach yet to come. All in all, it makes for a gritty but expansive experience, something quite unlike any of the other 80s gang movies made during the decade, whilst still recognisably part of that sub-genre.

We start with a young woman named Christy (Megan Murphy) seeking meaning in her life from a visit to a clairvoyant. This facade of abstract questioning and inspirational guidance very soon gives way to something far more brutal. As Christie leaves her appointment, she is assaulted on the street by a rough named Danny who mentions her boyfriend, Goose, by name. Evidently, this city is in the throes of a gang war, where the members’ women are the unfortunate collateral.

Danny’s gang the Spiders are soon going hell for leather with their rivals, the Ravens – with a pitched battle in a cemetery between Goose (Van Bebber himself) and Danny (Paul Harper), resulting in Goose getting hurt. He’s all for immediate vengeance, but his long-suffering girlfriend tells him she’s getting sick of the strain of wondering if he’s going to get home alive every day. After some resistance, Goose agrees; it’s time to quit the life. However, once it’s known that he’s no longer in his gang – soon finding out that the Ravens and the Spiders have decided to set their differences aside to work together – he’s apparently a marked man. And so, apparently, by extension, Christie is in danger too. Goose misses his moment to protect Christie, and, traumatised by this event, he takes some time to gather himself. But when he’s conveniently roped back in to the Spiders/Raven gang to take part in one last heist, it’s the perfect opportunity to play.

There’s a pleasing patina of grime from the very first frames of Deadbeat at Dawn; its whole charm is that it’s wholly and gloriously unreconstructed, never stopping short of sex and violence – even if intimated – in a way that most of the more slick, conventional contemporary films of similar ilk would needs must. The 1980s of the film in general looks very much pre-clean up, pre-gloss, with every interior and every alley looking authentically grim, and a largely amateur cast add more veritas to all of this. Alongside, there’s a seam of cynicism running through the film which works really well. Christie is into New Age beliefs, coming across as some sort of gurgled last gasp of Age of Aquarius thinking which looks incredibly feckless by contrast against all the bloodshed going on around her. The religious guy at a diner later in the film also suggests something of a sneer, as an oafish man berates a waitress for not also making a breakfast for God when she serves him his. There are a few of these knowing moments.

But then, the film does far more than make a series of knowing nods here and there in-between the fight scenes. The gang warfare itself veers from plausible to risible in some places: Goose’s training sequences look oddly choreographed, for instance, and dialogue spoken by some of the Spiders sounds rather stagey. In effect, lots of elements of Deadbeat at Dawn play out like modern Grand Guignol: this is definitely performance, but the subject matter is ferocious and no one gets off lightly. The worst of the violence might not be on-screen in the nature of the ‘torture porn’ which followed the film around a decade or so later, but the well-timed glimpses and insinuations of the horrors inflicted upon people work just as well as the longer sequences (saved for an incredible later pay-off which very definitely shows us the works, with Van Bebber more than paying his dues by doing his own stunts during the course of the action). Yes, there are a few lulls as Goose falls back and regroups, but these add a lot to his character. In the end, you do find yourself rooting for this anti-hero, which is no small thing given his behaviour throughout the film.

It’s genuinely easy to see how Deadbeat at Dawn has garnered a cult following amongst exploitation fans. Made thirty years ago, it’s aged well, it looks good (insert the usual compliments to Arrow Films here) and above all else, it’s immensely ambitious. That comes across…I was going to say ‘even now’, but perhaps particularly now, with our jaded appetites and a glut of by-numbers indie movies which soon fade from the memory. I don’t think that’s going to happen here. Admittedly a meld of dream sequences, hallucination and gang violence will not be for everyone, but I do hope the new Arrow release helps to bring the film to a new generation of viewers. I’d say it’s very much deserved.

Deadbeat at Dawn (1988) is available from Arrow Films now. 

 

 

Hang Up! Talking with director/writer Richard Powell

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Every year, if we’re lucky, we’ll encounter a short film at a festival which just blows us away. The affordances and limitations of the short movie medium provides so many opportunities for filmmakers to showcase their ideas, making them render these ideas in an economical manner, but nonetheless – if successful – weaving a story which indelibly stays with the audience. This is very much the case with a short film I encountered at this year’s Celluloid Screams Festival in Sheffield, UK. Hang Up! takes a very simple idea – that of someone making a mobile phone call by accident, just like we all have – and takes this idea forward, escalating the tension in a series of hand-over-mouth shocking ways, as husband Gary finds himself listening in on a conversation his wife, Emelia, is having about him. It turns out that his happy, stable life is anything but – and his wife doesn’t feel about him the way she has been enacting over the years. It’s a plausible, everyday set-up – and director/writer Richard Powell develops this horrid, believable framework in an engrossing manner.

I was fortunate to get to talk to Richard about his film; our interview follows. And, if you get the opportunity to support Hang Up! or any of the other ventures up and coming from Fatal Pictures, have at it. You won’t be sorry.

WP: So my first question…where did the idea for this short film come from? 

After working on several considerably more expensive short films over the years, I realized I just wanted to keep working and creating without all the intense cost and time restraints which a larger, FX-driven horror short would entail. I wanted to go back to the basics of filmmaking. I wanted to do something where all we had to rely on was my writing and direction and the performances; no flashy FX or cinematography, just meat and potatoes filmmaking. So that’s what I set out to do, then I had to conjure up a suitable concept – and out of the ether came HANG UP!

WP: As with many good short stories, in film or in print, Hang Up! takes a straightforward idea and plays it out in an increasingly shocking way…did you always have a firm idea of how far you were going to take the plot? Or how you were going to end the film?

I know I loved the simple set up of a butt dial you keep on listening to. I had that, but not what would be heard on the other line. All of the hack ideas came to mind first; a kidnapping or a murder or the like but all that stuff which comes easily to me was ignored because it comes easily for a reason. I sat with the idea until the concept of a disgruntled wife hiring a hitman to kill her husband came up. That was better but still a bit too obvious, but the kernel of a maniacal wife stuck and grew into Hang Up!

WP: Something really impressive about Hang Up! is how you create so much empathy for Gary, who finds himself listening to his wife’s real thoughts about him. Yet he doesn’t really speak. Similarly, Emelia, the wife, communicates an incredible amount of hate and duplicity without even being present in the film! How challenging was it to achieve all of this?

I don’t think it was difficult at all. Relationships/marriages are inherently dramatic and relatable because we’ve all been in them at some point. We can all understand the horror of Gary’s situation, the sheer unexpected shock of it. I also think many filmmakers overestimate what it takes to grip an audience and entertain them. Give me an interesting actor or two and something with some kind of truth in its message, campy or not, and I’m sold. I don’t need much more than that and I don’t give much more than that in Hang Up! and that was exactly my aim. I’ve got kinetic, off the wall ideas up my sleeve but I’m as much in love, if not more so, with quiet human stories.

WP: I think one of the reasons this film really landed for me was how it showed how even our closest relationships are often rather tenuous. Not to the extent described in Hang Up (hopefully!) but certainly, we might think we know someone, but not really know them at all. Was this something you aimed to explore?

To be honest, this theme is something I’m starting to realize I’m subconsciously obsessed with. I have four short films and two feature length scripts that explore this material in some form or another. The idea of a hidden or suppressed self and all the ways that can implode or explode is fascinating to me. I guess it stems from my feeling that most of the conflict and trauma in our lives doesn’t come from external forces, but from internal ones. In the case of Hang Up! Had Emelia simply voiced her frustrations early to her husband they wouldn’t have warped and twisted her into the thing she has become as our film begins.

WP: How have responses been to the film? Personally, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut by the end – pretty impressive for a film a few minutes long…

The response has been great! I think the film is unique, especially in today’s short film climate. I’m asking an audience to wait and listen and be patient, and that isn’t something they are used to in the short film medium. I think that alone creates a rewarding experience. I’ve watched people watching the film and it holds them, despite how static and paced it is; there’s a kind of perverse voyeurism in spying on Gary as his life falls apart while spying on his wife. You feel like you’re hearing and seeing things you shouldn’t be and there is a thrill to it all. I also think the film is darkly funny which makes it palatable considering where it ends up going. I just love that I can have a theatre full of people watch what is essentially a 14 minute monologue and be entertained and disturbed with words and acting and careful shot selection!

WP: Where next for Hang Up! – where else is it going to screen?

Who knows! We will keep sending it out and getting screenings around the world with some kind of eventual release on Blu-Ray, iTunes or Youtube. The film will be touring our home province on Ontario, Canada as part of the Blood in the Spring film Festival next however. We will make sure to post all the information about that and what is next on our social media pages including Twitter. You can find us at @fatalpictures for more!

WP: And finally – what next for Fatal Pictures? 

Fatal Pictures is ready to start making feature films, so hopefully you’ll be seeing news of a FAMILIAR feature film based on our short film of the same name soon. We also have plans for a smaller, self financed micro budget feature in the vein of Hang Up! This project will have a similar tone, style and intention as Hang up! but on a larger scale. It’s tough to say what comes next but I’ve got a lot of writing done and to do. I can wait to start getting into the world of feature films where I can really stretch my legs creatively and play with the medium in new and fun ways!

Mandy (2018)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Nicolas Cage has to be one of the most divisive actors out there, as well as one of the most hard-working; in fact, these days it’s actually pretty odd for an actor to garner the kinds of mixed feelings which he inspires, but everyone seemingly has an opinion about his extensive body of work. For me, he swings from borderline unwatchable (Vampire’s Kiss, ack) to phenomenal (Leaving Las Vegas is simply brilliant, just as an example). All I knew then, going in to see Mandy, was one thing: I knew nothing at all about the plot, but I did know that I could expect to see ‘peak Nicolas Cage’ in the film. And, oh my, this is the case. Gloriously so. Mandy also happens to be a perfect vehicle for its lead actor, and one of the best films I’ve ever seen him in. Whilst fairly plot lite, the film’s pace and ambience makes for a thrilling, engrossing viewing experience. I’d say that this could be the best film I’ve seen this year.

Set in the 80s, the story begins with Red (Cage) and Mandy, his wife, who are living an idyllic life in the boonies in their lakeside home (and what a home: I wanted to curl up and watch that analogue TV with them). Mandy divides her time between her art and a dependable, quiet job as a store clerk; Red’s a lumberjack. So far, so steady, and although we don’t spend too long in this calm, relaxed mode, you do get a genuine sense of the affection between these two. But a chance encounter with a busful of cultists propels Mandy into a brief, brutal nightmare, when they see her by chance from their vehicle. Tracing her to her home, and motivated by the ‘connection’ which cult leader Jeremiah feels he shares with Mandy (aided and abetted by the industrial strength hallucinogens which the cultists seem to like) Jeremiah tries to recruit the girl. Mandy is dosed and held captive, as is Red, but when she laughs at her would-be leader, it’s more than he can take, and so he punishes her. Red is forced to ensure seeing his beloved killed in front of his eyes, before the cult members depart, leaving him essentially for dead.

Traumatised and wounded, Red’s first thought is not however for calling the cops. It’s for revenge. Stalking the group, and the bizarre leather-clad biker gang who help them to do a lot of their dirty work, he starts to pick them off, one by one, with an increasingly diverse array of grisly methods. That’s it, in a nutshell.

I told you it was plot lite and it is, but this is by no means a bad thing; Mandy is more of an aural/visual experience than it is a detailed story, and the characters’ predilection for mind-altering substances gets passed on to the audience via the film’s incredible colour palettes, detailed asides into fictional worlds, pulsing soundtrack and overall talent for hyperbole. Red glowers, grimaces and screams his way through his ordeal, turning into more of a supernatural force than a man. Likewise, the cult members are larger than life themselves, and no pushovers. The biker gang are more like cenobites than regular beings, and the overblown, quasi-religious psychobabble coming from the cultists is matched against their extraordinarily cruel behaviour – Jeremiah in particular (played with full frontal aplomb by Linus Roache) is a deeply menacing figure, very arresting on screen. It’s interesting that the film takes for its title the name of a character who isn’t actually in the film for very long: however, it feels as though Mandy (British actress Andrea Riseborough) is present throughout, even if only as the driving factor behind Red’s escalating lunacy. The film’s quick, almost frenetic pace after the initial assault, supported by varied approaches such as animated sequences and on-screen text, make the film dreamlike, like a fractured memory of something so outlandish it could hardly be believed.

All of that said, I can understand why opinions on Mandy tend to fall into one of two camps – utter love for the film, or rejection outright. Your sentiments on Mr. Cage losing his marbles as only he can will have some impact on this, but also, the film’s refusal to do anything neatly, keeping characterisation on the down-low and prioritising atmosphere over any of the usual story markers could be challenging for some viewers. I would strongly suggest coming to Mandy with an open mind if you can, preparing yourself for the fact that this is an unorthodox tale which can and will make your head throb. If you can do that, then you can just allow the stylised violence to pour over you, and bask in the ambience. Mandy is an impressive, immersive piece of work; I absolutely adored it.

Knife + Heart (2018)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The opening scenes of Knife + Heart feel achingly familiar: how many films start with a woman in peril, running alone through the dark? Well, this is a film which doesn’t mind turning things on their head, even if the surprises are momentary. Anne (Vanessa Paradis) isn’t running from an assailant; she’s having a minor breakdown instead, and when she phones her girlfriend Lois for moral support in the early hours, it proves to be the final straw for her partner of ten years, who breaks off their relationship. It seems as though these drink-fuelled meltdowns are not so unusual. Anne is devastated, but we don’t see her showing weakness to this extent again. She simply gets back to work as a gay porn director, always looking for novel ideas and approaches to use in her films. She regularly sees Lois, who is also her film editor, but she’s trying to get on with her life whilst respecting Lois’s wishes, so they keep a discreet distance.

This is all disturbed by the disappearance of one of her key talents, whom we see getting dispatched during a liaison with a masked man. Before long, it seems as though someone is specifically targeting her enterprise, as more actors go missing, soon turning up horrifically butchered. Whilst Anne first appeals to the police for help, it seems as though they aren’t too motivated to assist her, citing the fact that the young men she routinely works with are often drifters with complex personal lives, and batting her away with faint reassurances. Eventually, in the face of what is happening she turns sleuth, and begins to investigate what is going on for herself. Her investigation takes her on a strange journey where she eventually uncovers an equally strange, and sad story, albeit one which threatens her friends, loved ones and her own life, as well as her livelihood.

Along the way, the film also plays with ideas of whether art imitates life, life imitates art, or whether the whole process is somehow cyclical. Anne, always the experimenter when it comes to her work, begins to use the unfolding case as a the inspiration for a very unusual kind of film, writing the real life goings-on into a script and filming a weird new hybrid of erotica and horror. It also transpires that the rest of her filmography plays a key role in the plot, too. All of this – bearing in mind that Knife + Heart is set in 1979 – allows for some glorious visuals. Sequences from Anne’s films are all refracted through plausibly vintage camera and celluloid, though the film itself is just as carefully framed and styled, with rich use of colour and a careful eye for stylistics. The M83 soundtrack is great, too, and fits really well. Paradis, a veteran actress albeit primarily in Francophone cinema, fits the bill perfectly here: whilst you don’t get particularly close to her character, I think that works given the context of the plot, and she looks great, with (and pardon me this observation) a fantastic aesthetic and wardrobe. In fact, it’s nice to see that the two lead female actresses are somewhat older, whilst it’s the guys that are far younger; it’s not an inversion which will change your life, granted, but it’s somewhat refreshing nonetheless, and I didn’t feel that this was simply driven by our current predilection for ‘subverting expectations’ by dithering with gender roles. It just works nicely. There are some very angry user reviews on IMDb complaining about the gay content, though I have to say that after the initial mild surprise of it being men not women getting it on FOR A CHANGE, it too simply settles down as a plot device, a reasonable framework for the rest of the film which allows interesting exploration of its themes.

My only minor gripe with Knife + Heart is that it undergoes a few tonal shifts where the film almost seems to invite you to laugh; if not laugh outright, then (for instance) some of the new film project scenes go from the sublime to the ridiculous, to the extent that you are taken out of the film as a whole for a moment, and made to ponder how seriously you ought to be taking things. Perhaps this is intended as a little light relief, or perhaps I just read it that way, but ultimately, a lot of the classic giallo cinema which clearly influences Knife + Heart does very similar things, particularly when it comes to plot exposition. Many has been the time when the ‘who’ of the whodunnit has been both impossible and impossibly silly. In that respect, director Yann Gonzalez could be said to be emulating the greats, paying lip service to his influences – though not, at least, by turning the ending of his film into a farce; things eventually play out in an engagingly tragic, trippy, grisly manner.

Overall, then, Knife + Heart is a lavish visual gift with a remarkable soundscape and plenty else to recommend it. It’s wholeheartedly recommended to fans of giallo cinema, and it does enough to set itself apart from the whole host of love letters to that genre which have popped up of late – mainly by having its own story to tell, rather than simply prioritising the aesthetics and hoping that the rest falls into place.

Knife + Heart played at the Sheffield Celluloid Screams Film Festival in October 2018. 

 

 

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2018)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Tigers Are Not Afraid spins some uncomfortable truths about life in Mexican border towns into a fantastical yarn. In so doing, it embeds its characters in a fairy tale, inviting the audience to see the tale through to the end, and to look for tropes we all recognise. The besieged princess, the ogre, the magical creatures, the three wishes…all present, but all interlaced with realistic horrors. It’s an interesting film which accomplishes a great deal.

We start exactly as we go on for the duration of the film, where an everyday scene is conflated with something magical, before violence and terror break through into the scene and take their place alongside. Estrella (Paola Lara) is in the midst of a school lesson about storytelling, and she and her classmates are in the middle of planning fairy tales for a creative writing session when a cartel shoot-out sees the children and teacher diving for cover. Depressingly, as frightening as all of this is, the children know the drill, clambering under their desks and waiting for the gunfire to end. Estrella’s teacher, aiming to comfort the girl, reaches out to her and hands her three stubs of chalk, telling her that they represent magic wishes. It’s a kind gesture Estrella which is happy to accept, and it seems as though she has escaped unscathed, finally making her way to the home she shares with her mother.

But her mother isn’t home. Estrella is confused, and then scared. Her mother hasn’t left a note, and Estrella has no way of knowing where she’s gone. She decides to use one of her wishes, but quickly learns that these wishes have a bitter aftertaste; her mother does return, but in spectral form, driving her now-orphaned daughter out of the house. Hungry and lonely, the girl ventures out into a town completely dominated by the local gang, the Huascas; her only hope of support is from other children in a similar position, living rough as they steal to feed themselves; there’s no infrastructure here to protect them. A local gang, led by the fierce and indomitable Shine (Juan Ramón López) reject her at first – he and Estrella have already had a run-in – but later he begrudgingly lets her stay with them. If only things were even that simple.

Shine, in a moment of madness brought on by his own grief at losing his own parents the same way everyone seems to lose their parents round here, has stolen a gun and a mobile phone from one of this ghost town’s most infamous gangsters, Caco (Iannis Guerrero). When Caco sobers up, he sets about getting his property back with all the monomania of a powerful man, as he and his associates both know and own these streets (one of the film’s most poignant, and teeth-setting moments is when the children seek the help of some local police, to no avail; these cops are nothing compared to the cartels, so they don’t even try). The gang is looking for the children, and when they find them, they drive them out of the ramshackle cabin they’ve pieced together, a place where they’ve even stolen and set up a few luxury items like TVs. Yet fleeing this place is the only way they escape with their lives.

Clearly, there’s something very special about this phone. Shine won’t part with it, and Caco won’t rest until he gets it. Goodness knows why, as it seems very unlikely anyone would dare to do anything with the phone; perhaps it’s more a case of having his own way. If his gang can’t kill the children, then they’ll cage them and use them for…well, it’s intimated that bodily organs are being traded, and also that children are being sold into slavery. This is just one of the ways in which urban legend collides with evidence that these things are going on; the children whisper about them, but if they don’t move fast, then they fall victim to them. Desperate, and also a little resentful of the new girl, Shine tells Estrella that the only thing they can do now is to kill Caco. Somehow, she agrees, taking his gun into his house…but someone has got there before her. She lies about this, enjoying a brief moment of glory which can’t and doesn’t last. But soon another gangster wants that phone, and the children have to run again…

All the while, more and more supernatural phenomena are plaguing Estrella. The ghosts of the Huascas’ victims are following her, terrifying her as they implore her to bring them the gang that murdered them. Blood literally and metaphorically begins to course through the children’s lives; dragons and tigers leap from walls and objects; the dead return and speak. Eventually fantasy and reality overlap, stories come to life, but at great cost to people who have already lost a great deal.

Magic realism of this kind allows us to see social issues through a new lens; key aspects of a story are brought into focus via the supernatural. For instance, The Lovely Bones allows the reader a new portal into grief and longing by making its narrator, Susie, deceased, having her introduce herself by saying, “I was fourteen when I was murdered…” The impossibility of her being able to reflect upon her own death in this way allows a new perspective on the lives of those left behind; it’s magical realism, and done well. This is also used to great effect in Tigers Are Not Afraid, which also allows unorthodox reflection upon death and loss, though perhaps its closer similarities to the work of Guillermo Del Toro, and specifically Pan’s Labyrinth, steal a little of its thunder: some scenes converge rather closely. This is unsurprising, given the earlier film also features an alienated girl, trying to navigate fraught times by trying to make sense of a fantastical world which only she can access. I also gather that director Issa López will now be working alongside Del Toro in future, which makes sense given their similar directorial styles.

However, whatever similarities there are, nothing can take away from the excellent performances given by the children of Tigers Are Not Afraid: you believe in every moment of peril and every moment of warmth. Seeing the little family unit get chased down is genuinely depressing, just as the adults here seem only able to vary between inert, maniacal, and dead. Just whilst I’m in the process of forging links to other works, it’s not hard to see commonality with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. It seems like Tigers Are Not Afraid is steeped in fantasy elements, all brought to bear on a part of the world which has real monsters, often ignored by those not immediately faced with them. And maybe that’s the point. A stylish, savage and resourceful film, Tigers Are Not Afraid is well made and well-paced, definitely deserving of a watch, and even whilst you might be able to note its influences, it certainly does enough to stand on its own merits.

Tigers Are Not Afraid just screened at Sheffield’s Celluloid Screams; our thanks to all at the festival.

Possum (2018)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Some films excel at that kind of grimy, disconcerting quality which Possum (2018) has in abundance. Every frame of this film makes your skin crawl: it’s a love letter to abandoned places and anonymous spaces, swept through with dead foliage and rot. This, in and of itself, makes the film fairly challenging viewing, even whilst you can appreciate the skill which went into arranging its sets and locations throughout. Add to this an arachnid puppet which seems to stand in for a grown man’s arrested development and mental trauma, and you have a fairly gruelling viewing experience. However, Possum doesn’t lend itself particularly readily to a coherent narrative – with the result that those not hypnotised by its interesting looks might find the whole experience as frustrating as it is unsettling.

The ‘blurb’ for the film tells us that Philip, the film’s chief protagonist (played with rare skill by Sean Harries) is returning to his dilapidated childhood home after some nameless disgrace has ended his career as a children’s entertainer, but – whether by nature of brutal editing, or out of a general sense of dispensing with straightforward plot development – no details whatsoever about this debacle are forthcoming, so that you would only really know this by reading about it. For all intents and purposes, we only see a middle-aged man carrying a holdall, on a journey of some kind. This is an obviously tortured guy, with not an albatross round his neck, but a terrifying tree-limbed spider marionette with a human face. I suppose if Philip was using this puppet to ‘entertain’ children, then it’s no wonder his career has come to an abrupt end, but there’s doubtless more to it than that.

Philip seems very invested in the puppet, which he calls ‘Possum’ (why?) but he also wants to get rid of it; its hold over him has obviously been of some duration, given that once back inside the squalid home where stepfather Maurice (Alun Armstrong) still lives, he is drawn towards picture books he seems to have had since childhood, which describe Possum in as terrifying a way as a certain similar book described a certain Babadook-dook-dook. Worse still, every time Philip tries to dispose of Possum, he ends up with it back in his life by mysterious means. Meanwhile, we are shown that he takes peculiar, unseemly interests in the goings-on around him, showing an odd fascination with a teenage boy he sees drawing on the train, perhaps seeing his scrawls as marking him out as a kindred spirit. We are also party to a very stilted resumption of Philip’s relationship with his stepfather, a man who seems perfectly at ease with the squalor which surrounds him, and who has little to say to his relative-by-marriage, other than laughing variously at his clear discomfort.

As the film progresses, Philip looks authentically more and more haunted by Possum, and seemingly more and more in need of getting things off his chest. It is certainly impressive to see how Harries manages to enact this increasing sense of oppression, as he almost disappears inside himself during the film’s progress. He also looks authentically ill, which is testament at least to the turmoil he’s feeling, even if he describes it very little indeed. In some respects Possum reminds me of the underappreciated Tony (2009), another film with a troubled, but unseemly male main character. As for Philip, his desperation to burn or to ditch the horrible puppet thing is, we see, useless; the more he seems to try to deal with this nightmarish situation, the more Possum appears, spider-limbed and vicious, in his dreams. Some of the sequences in Possum are genuinely unsettling, capturing something of those helpless childhood fears which so many of us seek in the horror cinema we watch as adults. Director/writer Matthew Holness clearly appreciates a good, creeping scare, and can bring a certain sense of a child’s powerlessness to the screen.

However, whilst you can feel genuine sympathy with such a tortured soul, there is very little in the way of closure here, just as there’s little concrete to get hold of throughout. My understanding of Philip’s issues with Maurice are essentially inferred, and not a little based on a kind of prejudice: I can’t, honestly, think of an interpretation for his trauma except for a certain kind of trauma, albeit one which is not exactly spelled out either. In fact, by the film’s close, I wasn’t sure whether I believed that most of the characters I’d watched were really present, so surreal and abstruse is the film as a whole. Overall, I feel that whatever else the film chooses to do or not to do, it badly needs a punchline. Not a neat tying-together of all loose ends, but something to avoid that final sense that little has taken place.

If you enjoy these kinds of exercises in atmospherics, then there is a great deal to love about Possum. Indeed, if you prefer cinema which is not forthcoming and leaves you with a series of sensations rather than telling a linear story, then it’s a triumph. However, this kind of approach is a risk, one which seemed to split the audience at Celluloid Screams, and one which I’d imagine will have a similar impact wherever Possum is seen and debated.

Possum screened at Celluloid Screams Film Festival 2018 and will be released in the UK on the 26th October 2018.

The Queen of Hollywood Blvd (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

A noir-ish montage of images and a voiceover ruminating on the immorality of Hollywood introduces The Queen of Hollywood Blvd, a self-professed crime drama which promises to pitch a hard-bitten club owner against the tactics of a gang of organised criminals. On paper, the film does just this – but the style and tone involved are not what many would expect, and indeed anyone expecting a high-action piece of work would find themselves feeling all at sea after watching this movie. Your tolerance for this take on a crime story depends very much on your tolerance for slow-burn, almost art-house cinema generally.

Our protagonist, ‘Queen’ Mary (Rosemary Hochschild) – who looks at first to be channelling Kristin Scott Thomas in Only God Forgives with the gear she’s wearing – runs a strip club in Hollywood Boulevard’s shadow, and she’s spent twenty years building up the business. In fact, the club’s anniversary coincides with a landmark birthday for Mary; it’s her 60th, so she plans to throw a special party. Like the cop working one last shift before retiring, things invariably go awry. An old associate named Duke (Roger Guenveur Smith) rocks up, claiming that he’s come to collect on an old and clearly substantial debt. Why now, when criminal fraternities aren’t exactly known for shelving debts owed to them for decades? Well, it all adds to the drama I suppose. Mary is, in effect, told that the club no longer belongs to her. She is to hand over the keys to another associate later that night, and then make herself scarce.

Undeterred, she goes about her business, trying to enjoy her birthday with a bit of cake and a few casual lines of illicit substances. However, when it turns out that the crooks have got a hold of her grown-up son to make sure she toes the line, Mary is forced after all to deal with them. They want to strike a bargain, enlisting her help for a few nefarious schemes – although this doesn’t mean she gets to keep the club, rather that she gets to keep her boy. Cue a crisis of conscience to go alongside the more general crisis, as Mary tries to negotiate her way through this situation.

The Queen of Hollywood Blvd is a visually-arresting but, truth be told, in several respects a very frustrating viewing experience. Director and writer Orson Oblowitz is delivering his first feature length film here, and to give due credit he has a good eye for visuals, in particular editing together grand cityscapes with painterly club interiors, using the otherworldly neons to good effect (again, Only God Forgives springs to mind). He is also reaching for an emphasis on character, and it’s good to see an older woman in a lead role who hasn’t been sandblasted by a plastic surgeon, but actress Hochschild is kept so deadpan and introspective that it’s difficult to get a real sense of her internal life and motivations, which are utterly key to driving the narrative onward. Her own lines are somewhat flat and peppered with platitudes, too, which also works against what could have been.

In other scenes, the script aims to be more naturalistic, and even adds in odd glimpses of humour reminiscent of Tarantino’s asides (though not attaining that; say what you like about Tarantino, but he’s superb at capturing something of the inanity and charm of everyday conversation). Also akin to Tarantino there’s heavy use of music, but perhaps most similarly of all we get yellow on-screen text to announce each new ‘act’ of the film, so Kill Bill can and does keep on intruding into your appreciation of this film.

I also found that some minor issues caught my eye; some continuity issues are in there, but then a bigger issue is that the film’s position in time was unclear. I found myself wondering why, say, one of the crooks had a framed picture of Reagan on the wall and VCRs figure in the plot, but then the streets are full of modern vehicles and the girls at the club have very modern-style tattoos. It could be that the film has opted quite deliberately to belong to that timeless, rootless type of setting which focuses fashionably on the lo-fi and doesn’t want us to know when these events are taking place, but I always find this distracting personally, an attempt to ignore time which makes me wonder about nothing else. (It Follows, I’m looking in your direction here.) But all of these things would be minor, were it not for the fact that The Queen of Hollywood Blvd is, I am afraid to say, quite so slow and ponderous as it is. Its deliberate pace and minimal action means that very little happens within the first hour; unless the atmosphere is note-perfect and engrossing, then this can be alienating. It even risks an audience’s engagement completely, something which worked against it in my case.

The Queen of Hollywood Blvd could quite possibly engage patient viewers with a penchant for brooding, minimalistic spins on crime drama, those for whom mood conquers everything. It’s also an artistic film. Perhaps the fact that it so clearly nods to other filmmakers who have achieved the very things it seems to have been influenced by works against it, emphasising its flaws rather than its strong points.

The Queen of Hollywood Blvd receives an On Demand release on October 16th 2018. 

 

 

30 Years of Men Behind the Sun

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Editor’s note: this discussion of Men Behind the Sun contains spoilers.

The Chinese film Men Behind the Sun (1988) is not altogether well known in the West, and has yet to enjoy the kind of lavish DVD or indeed Blu-Ray release which has usually happened for even the most censor-baiting movies by thirty years after their creation. Those who have not seen the film itself, but know a little about it, will probably know about its notorious reputation for gore, perhaps for several key scenes in particular; before I ever got hold of a copy, I knew about ‘the autopsy scene’ and ‘the frostbite scene’ from hushed discussions in magazines and fanzines, for example, and I’m willing to bet many readers here will have heard similar things. These scenes are still, undeniably, important and shocking in the extreme (and more so, when you learn a little about how they were done) but I think it’s a real disservice to the work of director Tun Fei Mou if his film is known only for these. These scenes, and others like them, should never exist in isolation in our imaginations – as merely grisly little tableaux to be relished by gorehounds. Men Behind the Sun is a phenomenal film, in which even the most seemingly outlandish scenes have their basis in historical fact, and however appalling the scenes are to watch, they’re of vital importance to the narrative of the film as a whole. In essence, the entire film is a scream of agony by the Chinese about their WWII treatment at the hands of the Japanese; its rage is measured and doled out in a well-constructed, engrossing story. I will acknowledge that it’s difficult to watch. But I feel that anyone with even a passing interest in the history of the Far East should see it, and should be upset by it. These things should upset us, and should be acknowledged.

As the film explains in its opening scenes, aggressive Japanese empire-building in the early decades of the twentieth century had seen it conquer wide swathes of the Far East, including Korea and parts of China. Expansionist ideals were by no means and have never been the exclusive tenure of the West, and so the Japanese occupied parts of countries which they considered to be populated by people decidedly less cultured than themselves. Throughout the decade, closer and closer relations with Nazi Germany – though often problematic – saw the Japanese essentially following a similar path of conflict, taking territory whilst prevaricating in its attitudes and alliances with the global powers by now in play. They also committed themselves to a small-scale, but no less brutal nor important programme of medical experimentation, targeted towards boosting their war efforts, but as with the experiments eventually undertaken by the Nazis in Europe, also overlaid with the pure cruelty of curiosity, when that curiosity finds subjects deemed less than human.

The district of Manchuria (North-East China) was under complete Japanese control after 1931. It was in this region that the Japanese established Unit 731, their flagship biological and chemical warfare research facility. At the end of the war, the Japanese did a remarkable and meticulous job of covering their tracks, destroying many records of what had taken place, but enough has survived to reveal a sadistic programme of experiments performed upon mainly the Han Chinese, though also on Soviets, Allies, Mongolians and Koreans. Men Behind the Sun is a film about Unit 731, and the young (almost child) Japanese soldiers forced to help oversee operations. In order to equip them to do their new jobs, the camp’s military and medical hierarchy has to essentially break down their humanity. The boys can no longer see the local Chinese as simply people, but as ‘marut’ – literally ‘logs’, but a word which I believe translates best as ‘guinea pigs’, simply fodder for experimentation. They try to be obedient, as any good Japanese soldier would; they prevaricate, however, when the cruelty of their masters impinges upon their lives in the most brutal way, when a local child who has been their friend is taken, killed and his organs harvested. He’s taken so quietly, because the boys themselves are told to bring him, and he trusts them. Their sense of betrayal is authentically upsetting to watch and phenomenally acted by the young cast.

To make this scene (one amongst many) even more skin-crawling, rumours that this scene contains a real autopsy turns out to be quite true. When a local child died in an accident, Tun Fei Mou somehow prevailed upon the doctors performing the child’s post-mortem to allow him to use footage: the deceased was about the same height and weight as the child actor for the scene, so it has that unsettling note of veritas. The doctors (incredibly) accommodated his request, even dressing in Japanese uniform to complete the procedure. The organs we see being removed are, so we’re told, pig organs rather than human, though it seems an odd concession to modesty when we’ve just seen a real child’s corpse being cut into. Likewise, the notorious ‘rats can overpower a cat’ scene where a cat is apparently mauled to death by rats is now being denied as real by the director, though it looks very, very much like an animal genuinely dies here. This sort of thing could of course never, ever happen today, and it’s bizarre that it ever did, but even if we can’t quite accept it, we can perhaps explain it by the fact that at this time, there was no SFX industry in China, and Tun Fei Mou felt it was of the utmost importance to show the experiments as they really were. He couldn’t have found anyone to make rubber models for key scenes, and even if he could, perhaps this would have gravely affected the film he was trying to make.

Real body parts are used for all of the film’s most horrific scenes. This includes the infamous scene I alluded to above, where a marut Chinese woman (fresh from having her surplus-to-requirements newborn smothered to death in the snow) is given slow, prolonged frostbite by having her arms extended through a hole in an outside wall into the freezing winter conditions. When her arms are completely dead, she first has her arms thawed in warm water, and then Dr. demonstrates how you can then skin the flesh from the bones; it flays off easily. The actress playing this part – Mou’s niece – held a real corpse’s arms out into the subzero temperatures in order to freeze them, nearly getting frostbite herself, and then holds onto them for the main scene. The overall effect is utterly repellent and – as revealed in a 1995 New York Times article, whose author was made privy to Japanese testimony – it really happened to people. Limbs were really frozen and flayed. Limbs were bludgeoned, to see if any feeling remained. The overall feeling I get from this scene, apart from obviously flinching, is the director’s real sense of anger that this ever happened to Chinese people. We’re forced to look at this in as exact a replica of the events in question as it is feasible to give, and the impact is immense. Of course, viewers are welcome to look at it simply as a gory scene and thousands no doubt have, but I think it’s missing the point.

I won’t simply talk through every scene in this horrific history lesson, but I will say I feel none of them are chosen simply by chance, or to shock for their own sakes. The effect of the film is to steadily, unhesitatingly paint a picture of a unique point in history, with content always rooted firmly in that history, and underpinned by character studies which give the film its strongest juxtapositions. The sadistic personality of Shiro Ishii, for example, is a man devoted to Japan, whose big break in the progress of biological warfare comes from a laugh he has after a trip to a brothel. You can spread bubonic plague, he realises, by distributing infected fleas in porcelain bombs. And of course, this is also true. It’s worth bearing in mind that this man was given immunity by the Americans after the war, and continued to work, turning up at front-line institutions to wield his expertise. In fact, after offering us another gruelling juxtaposition (the Japanese woman who gives birth as the camp burns, giving us one last glimpse of life opposing death) it is revealed to us that Shiro’s Eureka moment led to a real outbreak of bubonic plague in Manchuria. Plague, which was at one time scheduled for use against California, had Japan not surrendered after America unleashed  atomic bombs upon them…

“Friendship is friendship; history is history.”

When Men Behind the Sun was first made, it offered, interestingly, something of an issue for the modern China which had produced it: China was, by this point, keen to keep a good working and economic relationship with Japan, now a neighbour with whom it had long enjoyed peace. This neatly underlines how much the world had changed by this point, with young Chinese and Japanese people being gripped by so little of the negativity which would have been hugely significant to even their nearest ancestors. It is right and good that the sins of the fathers should not spill over into modern China or Japan; an ever-dwindling number of people even survive who could have been implicated in any of these events, and no one benefits when new generations are made to labour under whatever modern version of original sin we now think is befitting.

However, nor should we shy away from unpalatable truths. Where many historical films can be taken to task for tinkering with history, rendering it more tolerable or even misrepresenting recorded facts in order to offer a different version of events, Men Behind the Sun is rather different fare, and audiences were unsurprisingly shocked by it all, with Japanese audiences in particular finding it hard to bear. Several sequels followed, each in turn examining more unpalatable histories, though never quite as shockingly as Men Behind the Sun did. This film does everything it can to tell its story, taking every opportunity to show us what is strongly believes in, with no need to embellish, and a wholesale rejection of glossing over anything. This it does by shocking means, and by using methods which would today be illegal. This means that Men Behind the Sun has more of a reputation as an exploitation movie, an understandable but, to my mind misleading state of affairs which threatens to dismiss a unique film about a little-known period of time. It’s a period in time, it’s worth remembering, which was very nearly kept secret forever. Had the Japanese officials at Unit 731 been any more thorough in its cover-up, no one would ever have known what befell tens of thousands of people who ended up there.

I can end this feature with nothing further other than to reiterate my belief in the film’s essential worth, and to point again to the quote which runs over the film’s opening credits (quoted above) – words which sum up the weight of the past, without succumbing entirely to it. The world into which Men Behind the Sun was released was indeed benefiting from friendship with the old adversary, but nothing can ever take away what had happened, and a film of this calibre and nature ensures that we learn from the bloody lessons of history. It’s a fitting and a sobering legacy.

Strange Nature (2018)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

There have been many horror films about environmental havoc over the years, but it seems as though frogs have not figured prominently in these. Aside from the game-changing (or even life-changing) Hell Comes to Frogtown and a short cameo in Baskin, frogs have been largely overlooked, so I’ll admit: the press information for Strange Nature won me over via its apparent novelty, speaking of mutant frogs and the like. It’s possibly strange that we’ve seen so few amphibians in horror cinema; frogs have to live with us, have to cope with whatever we flush into the water, and their habitat has an immediate effect on them. This brings us to rural Minnesota, where the story begins.

We’re introduced to some of our key characters, mother Kim (Lisa Sheridan) and sulky pre-teen son Brody (Jonah Beres). Mother and son are heading to Tuluth, Minnesota to look after her ailing father Chuck (Bruce Bohne), and son is sulky because he doesn’t much fancy living somewhere which has no indoor toilet, let alone Wi-Fi. Conditions at their new home are therefore understandably basic, though the surrounding farmland is beautiful, and attractive to wildlife photographers. Such as Lisa (Tiffany Shepis) who soon encounters what sounds like a large, disgruntled critter (which, sadly, we never see). Brady and Kim soon find that lots of the frogs in the area are oddly mutated, with additional limbs, and they begin to ask why – at around the same time as people begin to go missing. Thus the scene is set for nature to give these folks a kicking, with Kim now in a new starring role as environmental investigator.

The film at this juncture could have gone, to my mind, in one of two ways. Either it could have gone all out with glorious excess, using its environmental theme as an excuse to hurl froggy gore at the screen, or else elected to look quite seriously at the topic of pollution and its aftermath. Perhaps surprisingly, at least to my mind, the film largely opts for the latter. This is a very script-heavy film with a lot of dialogue employed to develop character and motivation, though thanks to this it feels a little slow in the middle act, and after Tiffany Shepis departs proceedings very early (she’s criminally underused here, and generally deserves more appreciation for sheer work ethic alone) it feels as though we’ve just been tantalised with the promise of some huge aggressive monster-creature. Instead, Kim is all about exorcising her demons as a former pop singer who made the mistake of insulting the denizens of Tuluth before heading off to a better life, and so she ends up working with the local elementary school science teacher to understand the situation and hopefully alert the locals to what’s happening before it’s Too Late.

Gradually, Strange Nature becomes less about frogs and more about general mutation issues, as the pollution problem seems to be affecting people too. Plot-wise, there’s a hint at something a little like schistosomiasis, but I was largely put in mind of The Bay, with whatever’s in the water now extending its reach to the human population. The tone stays serious throughout, though the film does save some practical effects for the final act. There are ideas here, and some of the special effects scenes are quite imaginative, but it doesn’t quite feel like a pay-off. Also, does every indie filmmaker use the same audio library? There’s a baby crying in this film which feels like the most familiar baby’s cry in the world, having been used on Tool’s album Aenima and, it seems, in every low-budget film since. That ‘baby’ could be a parent themselves by now.

Everyone is very much in earnest in Strange Nature, and the film quite fairly endeavours to make serious points about our impact upon the natural world, perhaps wisely realising that a full-on approach with everything alluded to appearing on screen would be costly and difficult to achieve. The emphasis is very much on the people affected by this story accordingly, and I suppose you do in the end feel that the key characters have been on the proverbial ‘journey’, so in that respect Strange Nature does what it sets out to do. This doesn’t grant us a high-action film, however, and it does feel as though the film lacks some punching power, holding back its horror elements until the bitter end, which is a little frustrating. Still, the film does have noble aims, even if it ultimately gets there by less than perfect means. This is after all James Ojala’s first feature-length offering, and after honing his skills in a number of different roles in filmmaking, I’m sure there’s lots more to come from him yet.